Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd song)
Encyclopedia
"Wish You Were Here" is the title track on Pink Floyd
's 1975 album Wish You Were Here. The song's lyrics encompass writer Roger Waters
' feelings of alienation from other people. Like most of the album, it refers to former Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett
and his breakdown. David Gilmour
and Roger Waters collaborated to write the music.
In 2004, the song was ranked #316 on Rolling Stone
s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
.
s from "Have a Cigar
" as if a radio had been tuned away from one station, through several others (including a radio play and one playing Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony
), and finally to a new station where "Wish You Were Here" is beginning. The radio was recorded from Gilmour's car radio. Gilmour performed the intro on a twelve-string guitar, processed to sound like it was playing through an old transistor radio, and then overdubbed a fuller-sounding acoustic guitar solo
. This passage was mixed to sound as though the guitarist was sitting in a room, playing along with the radio; it also contains a whine that slowly changes pitch—emulating the heterodyne
between two drifting AM radio
signals.
The intro riff is repeated several times and reprised when Gilmour plays further solos with scat singing
accompaniment. At the end of the recorded song, the final solo crossfades with wind sound effect
s (reminiscent of "One of These Days" from the 1971 album Meddle
), and finally segues into the second section of the multi-part suite "Shine On You Crazy Diamond
".
The song borrows the imagery of a "steel rail" from Syd Barrett's solo song, "If It's in You", from The Madcap Laughs
album.
instead of acoustic guitar whilst Snowy White
played a 12-string Ovation acoustic guitar. At some of these shows (all of the US shows, notably), Mason tuned an actual transistor radio on stage to a local radio station, seguing into the pre-recorded part from the album to start the song and Rick Wright would perform an extended piano coda as the wind effects played. When Pink Floyd were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
, Gilmour and Wright (Mason was in the audience) performed the song with the assistance of their presenter Billy Corgan
on rhythm guitar
.
(with the radio intro following the end of a heavily edited "Shine On You Crazy Diamond") and as the 23rd track on the Echoes
compilation (with the radio intro following "Arnold Layne
", and at the end crossfading with "Jugband Blues
").
A live recording included on the 1995 live album
P•U•L•S•E was issued as a single
/EP
. The cover of the EP features two men whose faces are distorted by fish bowls, referring to the line "We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year". As of August 2011, this is the last single released by Pink Floyd (although promos of "Echoes", "Young Lust
" and "Money" (2003 edit for the 30th anniversary re-issue of The Dark Side of the Moon
) were made available to the press and radio stations).
In 2005, Waters and Eric Clapton
performed the song at the Tsunami Aid
concert, and in 2005's Live 8
, Waters rejoined his former bandmates in London
to perform it, along with 3 other classic Pink Floyd songs.
Recorded between January and July 1975 at Abbey Road Studios, London
.
's second studio album, The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book
. The track was released in December 2001, peaking at #2 on the UK Singles Chart.
UK CD Single (672156 2)
UK Cassette (672156 5)
recorded a cover on their CD Under Cover – Chapter One.
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
's 1975 album Wish You Were Here. The song's lyrics encompass writer Roger Waters
Roger Waters
George Roger Waters is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. He was a founding member of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd, serving as bassist and co-lead vocalist. Following the departure of bandmate Syd Barrett in 1968, Waters became the band's lyricist, principal songwriter...
' feelings of alienation from other people. Like most of the album, it refers to former Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett
Syd Barrett
Syd Barrett , born Roger Keith Barrett, was an English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and painter, best remembered as a founding member of the band Pink Floyd. He was the lead vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter during the band's psychedelic years, providing major musical and stylistic...
and his breakdown. David Gilmour
David Gilmour
David Jon Gilmour, CBE, D.M. is an English rock musician and multi-instrumentalist who is best known as the guitarist, one of the lead singers and main songwriters in the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. In addition to his work with Pink Floyd, Gilmour has worked as a producer for a variety of...
and Roger Waters collaborated to write the music.
In 2004, the song was ranked #316 on Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
"The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" was the cover story of a special issue of Rolling Stone, issue number 963, published December 9, 2004, a year after the magazine published its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time"....
.
Composition
In the original album version, the song segueSegue
A segue is a smooth transition from one topic or section to the next.-In music:In music, segue is a direction to the performer. It means continue without a pause. It comes from the Italian "it follows". The term attacca is also used in classical music.For written music it implies a transition...
s from "Have a Cigar
Have a Cigar
"Have a Cigar" is the third track on Pink Floyd's 1975 album Wish You Were Here. It follows "Welcome to the Machine" and on the original LP opened side two...
" as if a radio had been tuned away from one station, through several others (including a radio play and one playing Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony
Symphony No. 4 (Tchaikovsky)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36, was written between 1877 and 1878. The symphony's first performance was at a Russian Musical Society concert in Saint Petersburg on February 10 /February 22 1878, with Nikolai Rubinstein as conductor.- Form :The symphony is in four...
), and finally to a new station where "Wish You Were Here" is beginning. The radio was recorded from Gilmour's car radio. Gilmour performed the intro on a twelve-string guitar, processed to sound like it was playing through an old transistor radio, and then overdubbed a fuller-sounding acoustic guitar solo
Solo (music)
In music, a solo is a piece or a section of a piece played or sung by a single performer...
. This passage was mixed to sound as though the guitarist was sitting in a room, playing along with the radio; it also contains a whine that slowly changes pitch—emulating the heterodyne
Heterodyne
Heterodyning is a radio signal processing technique invented in 1901 by Canadian inventor-engineer Reginald Fessenden where high frequency signals are converted to lower frequencies by combining two frequencies. Heterodyning is useful for frequency shifting information of interest into a useful...
between two drifting AM radio
AM broadcasting
AM broadcasting is the process of radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation. AM was the first method of impressing sound on a radio signal and is still widely used today. Commercial and public AM broadcasting is carried out in the medium wave band world wide, and on long wave and short wave...
signals.
The intro riff is repeated several times and reprised when Gilmour plays further solos with scat singing
Scat singing
In vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables or without words at all. Scat singing gives singers the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms, to create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using their voice.- Structure and syllable choice...
accompaniment. At the end of the recorded song, the final solo crossfades with wind sound effect
Sound effect
For the album by The Jam, see Sound Affects.Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media...
s (reminiscent of "One of These Days" from the 1971 album Meddle
Meddle
Meddle is the sixth studio album by English progressive rock group Pink Floyd. It was released in October 1971.The album was recorded at a series of locations around London, including Abbey Road Studios...
), and finally segues into the second section of the multi-part suite "Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Shine On You Crazy Diamond
"Shine On You Crazy Diamond" is a nine-part Pink Floyd composition written by Roger Waters, Richard Wright, and David Gilmour. The song is a tribute to former band member Syd Barrett, although it was not originally explicitly written with him in mind. It was first performed on their 1974 French...
".
The song borrows the imagery of a "steel rail" from Syd Barrett's solo song, "If It's in You", from The Madcap Laughs
The Madcap Laughs
The Madcap Laughs is an album by British singer/songwriter Syd Barrett, released on 3 January 1970. It was his first solo album after being replaced in the band Pink Floyd by his old school friend David Gilmour.- History :...
album.
Live performances
"Wish You Were Here" made its stage debut on the band's 1977 tour, which featured a performance of the entire album at every show. It was not played live by the band for nearly ten years after this, yet became a concert staple after its reappearance in 1987 — and was performed at nearly all subsequent Pink Floyd concerts. In the original 1977 concert performances, Gilmour would play his Fender StratocasterFender Stratocaster
The Fender Stratocaster, often referred to as "Strat", is a model of electric guitar designed by Leo Fender, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares in 1954, and manufactured continuously by the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation to the present. It is a double-cutaway guitar, with an extended top...
instead of acoustic guitar whilst Snowy White
Snowy White
Snowy White is an English guitarist, known for having played with Thin Lizzy and with Pink Floyd and, more recently, for Roger Waters'...
played a 12-string Ovation acoustic guitar. At some of these shows (all of the US shows, notably), Mason tuned an actual transistor radio on stage to a local radio station, seguing into the pre-recorded part from the album to start the song and Rick Wright would perform an extended piano coda as the wind effects played. When Pink Floyd were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum located on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is dedicated to archiving the history of some of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, engineers and others who have, in some major way,...
, Gilmour and Wright (Mason was in the audience) performed the song with the assistance of their presenter Billy Corgan
Billy Corgan
William Patrick "Billy" Corgan, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional poet best known as the frontman and sole permanent member of The Smashing Pumpkins. Formed by Corgan and guitarist James Iha in Chicago, Illinois in 1987, the band quickly gained steam with the...
on rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
.
Other recorded versions by Pink Floyd
"Wish You Were Here" later appeared as the fifth track on A Collection of Great Dance SongsA Collection of Great Dance Songs
-8-track cartridge:Program 1#"One of These Days"#"Wish You Were Here"Program 2#"Sheep"Program 3#"Shine On You Crazy Diamond" Program 4#"Money" #"Another Brick in the Wall " -Personnel:Pink Floyd...
(with the radio intro following the end of a heavily edited "Shine On You Crazy Diamond") and as the 23rd track on the Echoes
Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd
Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd is a compilation album by Pink Floyd. It was released by EMI Records in the United Kingdom on 5 November 2001 and the following day in the United States through Capitol Records. It debuted at number 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart on 24 November 2001, with sales...
compilation (with the radio intro following "Arnold Layne
Arnold Layne
David Gilmour, during his solo tour promoting On an Island, unexpectedly added the song to the setlist near the end of the American tour on the 17 April 2006 show at the Oakland Paramount Theatre...
", and at the end crossfading with "Jugband Blues
Jugband Blues
"Jugband Blues" is a song by British psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd, and is featured on their second album, A Saucerful of Secrets...
").
A live recording included on the 1995 live album
Live album
A live album is a recording consisting of material recorded during stage performances using remote recording techniques, commonly contrasted with a studio album...
P•U•L•S•E was issued as a single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...
/EP
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
. The cover of the EP features two men whose faces are distorted by fish bowls, referring to the line "We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year". As of August 2011, this is the last single released by Pink Floyd (although promos of "Echoes", "Young Lust
Young Lust (song)
"Young Lust" is a song by Pink Floyd. It appeared on The Wall album in 1979.-Composition:"Young Lust" is approximately 3 minutes, 25 seconds in length...
" and "Money" (2003 edit for the 30th anniversary re-issue of The Dark Side of the Moon
The Dark Side of the Moon
The Dark Side of the Moon is the eighth studio album by English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released in March 1973. It built on ideas explored in the band's earlier recordings and live shows, but lacks the extended instrumental excursions that characterised their work following the departure...
) were made available to the press and radio stations).
In 2005, Waters and Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton
Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...
performed the song at the Tsunami Aid
Tsunami Aid
Tsunami Aid: A Concert of Hope was a worldwide benefit held for the tsunami victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake. It was broadcast on NBC and its affiliated networks of USA Network, Bravo, PAX, MSNBC, CNBC, Sci-Fi, Trio, Telemundo and other NBC Universal stations and was heard on any Clear...
concert, and in 2005's Live 8
Live 8
Live 8 was a string of benefit concerts that took place on 2 July 2005, in the G8 states and in South Africa. They were timed to precede the G8 Conference and summit held at the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder, Scotland from 6–8 July 2005; they also coincided with the 20th anniversary of Live Aid...
, Waters rejoined his former bandmates in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
to perform it, along with 3 other classic Pink Floyd songs.
Personnel
- Roger WatersRoger WatersGeorge Roger Waters is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. He was a founding member of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd, serving as bassist and co-lead vocalist. Following the departure of bandmate Syd Barrett in 1968, Waters became the band's lyricist, principal songwriter...
— Fender bass guitarBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, tape effects - David GilmourDavid GilmourDavid Jon Gilmour, CBE, D.M. is an English rock musician and multi-instrumentalist who is best known as the guitarist, one of the lead singers and main songwriters in the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. In addition to his work with Pink Floyd, Gilmour has worked as a producer for a variety of...
— 6- and 12-string acoustic guitars, pedal steel guitarPedal steel guitarThe pedal steel guitar is a type of electric guitar that uses a metal bar to "fret" or shorten the length of the strings, rather than fingers on strings as with a conventional guitar. Unlike other types of steel guitar, it also uses pedals and knee levers to affect the pitch, hence the name "pedal"...
, tape effects, lead and backing vocals - Richard WrightRichard Wright (musician)Richard William Wright was an English pianist, keyboardist and songwriter, best known for his career with Pink Floyd. Wright's richly textured keyboard layers were a vital ingredient and a distinctive characteristic of Pink Floyd's sound...
— SteinwaySteinway & SonsSteinway & Sons, also known as Steinway , is an American and German manufacturer of handmade pianos, founded 1853 in Manhattan in New York City by German immigrant Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg...
piano, MinimoogMinimoogThe Minimoog is a monophonic analog synthesizer, invented by Bill Hemsath and Robert Moog. It was released in 1970 by R.A. Moog Inc. , and production was stopped in 1981. It was re-designed by Robert Moog in 2002 and released as Minimoog Voyager.The Minimoog was designed in response to the use of... - Nick MasonNick MasonNicholas Berkeley "Nick" Mason is an English drummer and songwriter, best known for his work with Pink Floyd. He was the only constant member of the band since its formation in 1965...
— drumsDrum kitA drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
, tape effects - Stephane GrappelliStéphane GrappelliStéphane Grappelli was a French jazz violinist who founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands....
— violinViolinThe violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
(There is a brief piece of violin playing at the end of the track which was subsequently all but drowned out by the addition of the wind effects, although if you listen closely or turn the volume up louder, starting at the 5:21 mark, the barely-audible violin can be heard. Violinist Stephane Grappelli was recording in a downstairs studio, and Gilmour had suggested that there be a little "country fiddle" at the end of the song. Grappelli duly obliged, although because his contribution is barely audible, the band decided not to credit him for it in the sleeve notes. According to Waters, he received the agreed fee of £300, however.)
Recorded between January and July 1975 at Abbey Road Studios, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
Quotes
Wyclef Jean version
"Wish You Were Here" served as the fourth and final single from Wyclef JeanWyclef Jean
Wyclef Jean is a Haitian musician, record producer, and politician. At age nine, Jean moved to the United States with his family and has spent much of his life in the country...
's second studio album, The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book
The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book
The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book is the second studio album released by Haitian singer Wyclef Jean. It was certified platinum in the UK in 2001...
. The track was released in December 2001, peaking at #2 on the UK Singles Chart.
UK CD Single (672156 2)
- "Wish You Were Here" (Radio Edit) – 4:04
- "No Woman, No Cry" (Live Version) – 4:33
- "911" (Live Version) – 4:23
- "Wish You Were Here" (Video) – 4:25
UK Cassette (672156 5)
- "Wish You Were Here" (LP Version) – 4:25
- "Perfect Gentleman" (Remix Radio Edit) – 3:59
Tangerine Dream cover
Electronic group Tangerine DreamTangerine Dream
Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The band has undergone many personnel changes over the years, with Froese being the only continuous member...
recorded a cover on their CD Under Cover – Chapter One.